When I sold my first middle-grade novel in 2005, it wasn't that common to put an author photo on the back flap, but 24-year-old Korean-American me insisted. I wanted Asian girls to see my face. And more than that, I wanted them to see what is possible.

Jenny Han

My mother insisted that I pursue music. I rented out my father's musical equipment and earned some money. As a child, I wasn't sure about a career goal, but I was always fascinated by electronic gadgets, specially musical equipment.

A. R. Rahman

Music Money Men

I announced my retirement from international cricket in May 2018 because I wanted to reduce my workload and spend more time with my wife and young sons. Some have insisted I was motivated purely by money. They are wrong.

AB de Villiers

Work Time Money

My parents homeschooled my sister and me for many years. Why? Because the local school insisted that I, being three, should go to preschool, and my sister, being five, should go to kindergarten. The problem? You learn your alphabet in preschool, and I was already reading chapter books.

Adora Svitak

Home Art Your

Both Naga Chaitanya and Akhil are in the movies. They both insisted on being launched outside the home banner .They were very clear that they didn't want a home launch.My husband and I are very proud of them.

Amala Akkineni

Movies Home Ya

I have friends who died being successful bohemians. Today, I see people my age who are gifted but who insisted on staying in this group, and it's beaten them so bad. They have to spend so much time on ego maintenance, they can't get any work done. They'd be very happy to sell out, but there are no buyers, and that hurts.

Aram Saroyan

Work Time Success

Columbia University, where I went to study in 1993, insisted its undergraduates learn a foreign language, so I discovered French.

Aravind Adiga

Age Where University

I didn't really want to sing at first, but my dad insisted that I do.

Aretha Franklin

Want Ted T

My mother wanted to name me Jackie or Jacqueline but she got to name my sister and my brother, so my dad and my brother insisted on naming me. And they were big fans of 'The Little Mermaid.'

Ariel Winter

Were Wanted Want

Trump has repeatedly insisted that he is innocent of colluding with Russia and had no idea about his campaign staff's Russia contacts. So he should be glad to know that the FBI appears to have been trying to thwart a hostile country's efforts to infiltrate his campaign.

Asha Rangappa

War Art Yin

Through every victory and every setback, I've insisted that change is never easy and never quick; that we wouldn't meet all of our challenges in one term, or one presidency, or even in one lifetime.

Barack Obama

Time Life Change

Michael Lewis, author of 'Moneyball,' got special access for a profile of Obama for 'Vanity Fair' - but Obama insisted on redlining his quotes.

Ben Shapiro

Money Vanity Van

Imagine my surprise when, after a lifetime of teaching me to keep personal things to myself, Mom insisted my drawings were the start of a comic strip for millions of people to enjoy.

Cathy Guisewite

Time Mom Life

For the first three years of his life, my son insisted on hearing 'Goodnight Moon' before bedtime. Like most babies, he was not a good sleeper by disposition - but reading seemed to help, and this book specifically became part of his whole wind-down ritual.

Celeste Ng

Time Life Good

If any successes has come to me, it came because I insisted on thinking things through. That's all I was capable of doing in life, was thinking pretty hard about trying to get the right answer, and then acting on it. I never learned to do anything else.

Charlie Munger

Success Life Yin

On his first full day in office, Mr. Trump insisted that his inaugural crowd was the largest ever, a baseless boast that will likely set a pattern for his relationship both to the media and to the truth.

Charlie Sykes

Truth Relationship Will

Often, I grow irritated before the first tile has been placed on the Scrabble board. This generally occurs when one of my opponents has insisted upon bringing a dictionary to the table, making it clear that he will be consulting it throughout the game.

Craig Brown

Will Up Tin

We certainly could have voted on making the middle-class tax cuts and tax cuts for working families permanent had the Republicans not insisted that the only way they would support those tax breaks is if we also added $700 billion to the deficit to give tax breaks to the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans. That's what was really disturbing.

Debbie Wasserman Schultz

Work Would Working

There was a three hour differential in performances because the sponsor insisted it be done live for California. You would go on at 8 pm in New York but you would also have to go on at 8 p.m. in California. That meant coming back in to do the show at 11 p.m.

Dick York

You York Would

Piper insisted she had to be out of breath when we played this one scene, so she ran around the block. Thank God she wasn't doing a crucifixtion scene; we would have had to nail her to the wall.

Dick York

God Would Wall

As a kid, I was growing up in an era of celebration of the Civil War centennial, with a lot of 'Lost Cause' emphasis on the Confederacy. I used to play Civil War soldiers with my brothers as a child, and my older brother always insisted that he got to be Lee, and I got be Grant. I never knew that Grant won until quite some time had passed.

Drew Gilpin Faust

War Time Won

Orthodox theologians insisted that the rest of humankind were only transitory creatures, lost in sin - a view that would support what would become their dominant teaching about salvation, offered only through Christ, and, in particular, through the church they claimed to represent.

Elaine Pagels

If it was up to me, I would send the gay community, who insisted on celebrating in Jerusalem, to Sodom and Gomorrah.

Eli Yishai

After watching my first World Series in 1977, I wanted to be Reggie Jackson. I bought a big Reggie poster. I ate Reggie candy bars. I entered a phase during which I insisted on having the same style of glasses Reggie had: gold wire frames with the double bar across.

Eric Liu

But courage which goes against military expediency is stupidity, or, if it is insisted upon by a commander, irresponsibility.

Erwin Rommel

In medical school, you're taught to write in this convoluted, Latinate way. I knew the vocabulary as well as anyone, but I would write kidney instead of nephric. I insisted on using English.

Ethan Canin

Educated women armed with computers have defeated extremists by denying them a monopoly to define cultural identity and interpret religious texts. No extremist can say that women are inferior to men without being made a laughingstock on Al Jazeera. Islam insisted on equality between everyone.

Fatema Mernissi

'Star Trek' episodes always insisted that humanity is on its bumpy way to what will be a glorious future in the 23rd century, in which we will have left most of our old selfishness - and old hatreds and prejudices - far behind us.

Gene Roddenberry

The transition state of manners and language cannot be too often insisted upon: for this affected the process at both ends, giving the artist in fictitious life an uncertain model to copy and unstable materials to work in.

George Saintsbury

What a travesty it is that the high priests of Leave in 2016, who insisted to all of us that Brexit would mean a return to parliamentary sovereignty, are undermining and circumventing parliamentary sovereignty in order to deliver their hard Brexit.

Gina Miller

The only thing I can think of was an incident one day when I did get angry with the substitutes for talking behind the goal while we were practising free-kicks - I told them to pay attention because we might need them during the match. That was something I always insisted on.

Glenn Hoddle

For a shot, I had to look like I've slipped on wet floor and hurt my back. My director wanted me to just act it out, but I insisted on doing it with water on the floor to make it look authentic. He was against the idea, but I did it and almost broke my back.

Harshvardhan Rane

By the 1870s, ex-Confederates had taken their support for Western individualism a step further. They insisted the federal government was actively persecuting Western individuals.

Heather Cox Richardson

Republicans who controlled the government in the 1920s insisted that national prosperity depended on government protection of the rich, who they believed would plow their capital back into the economy to provide jobs and higher wages for workers.

Heather Cox Richardson

If a man insisted always on being serious, and never allowed himself a bit of fun and relaxation, he would go mad or become unstable without knowing it.

Herodotus

Everybody told me that if I insisted on doing rockabilly music, I'd never have a chance of selling any records. In fact, I lost count of how many people told me to ditch it all together, in favour, I guess, of sounding like everybody else.

Imelda May

When I was young, I'd fight everyone who insisted I'd be an actress. I'd say, 'No way. I'm going to be a veterinarian. I'm going to work at Wetzel's Pretzels.'

Ireland Baldwin

My mother insisted that I have a normal upbringing.

James MacArthur

In most multiple composer situations, you find it because someone got nervous about the music and insisted that somebody else come in and help.

James Newton Howard

As physics students, we are taught that physicists are smart, that chemists are moderately acceptable, and that biologists are certainly not very intelligent. So I wasn't inclined to take a biology course. But my father insisted, and maybe what he had in mind was that, if there were no jobs in physics, I would end up being a doctor.

James Rothman

Because I was writing verse, my instructor suggested I study Shakespeare. The Shakespeare teacher insisted you couldn't understand the text without seeing it on its feet.

Jamey Sheridan

From the moment I could express myself, I acted like a stereotypical girl and insisted that I was a girl. I wasn't just a boy who liked girly things - I knew I was a girl.

Jazz Jennings

My mother is a big believer in being responsible for your own happiness. She always talked about finding joy in small moments and insisted that we stop and take in the beauty of an ordinary day. When I stop the car to make my kids really see a sunset, I hear my mother's voice and smile.

Jennifer Garner

When I sold my first middle-grade novel in 2005, it wasn't that common to put an author photo on the back flap, but 24-year-old Korean-American me insisted. I wanted Asian girls to see my face. And more than that, I wanted them to see what is possible.

Jenny Han

At 6:30, which was when the national news began, my father raised the volume and adjusted the antennas. Usually I occupied myself with a book, but that night my father insisted that I pay attention.

Jhumpa Lahiri

My mother insisted that her children read.

Jimmy Buffett

When I was a teenager, my father went bust. He could have declared himself bankrupt, but he was an honourable man and he insisted on paying back all his debts. That almost ruined the family. I was aware that my mother and father couldn't control things anymore. I guess I was afraid that we would end up on the street.

Jo Nesbo

I graduated from Jones College, man, in Jacksonville, Florida, baby! I couldn't get in anywhere else, man. I was the worst student ever. I couldn't get in anywhere else. My father insisted I go to college, so I graduated, made the dean's list and everything.

Joe Piscopo

With regard to the ballot, it is worthy of remark that no meeting has been held in favour of Reform at which the ballot has not been strongly insisted upon.

John Bright

I got into musical comedy because of Shakespeare, not because of singing. They needed someone to understudy Richard Burton. I was also going to musical auditions because the agent I had insisted I go to them.

John Cullum

The United States established itself as a trustworthy new nation in its first two decades after the Revolutionary War by paying its debts, even when many in the country believed it had no obligation to do so. Alexander Hamilton, the founder of this newspaper, insisted on it.

John Podhoretz